In many industries, organizations employ a computer-based customer relationship management (CRM) system to track the organization's contacts with its customers. CRM systems store and track information on current and prospective customers of the organization. CRM systems often are used by organizations to customize and improve services provided to their customers and/or prospective customers.
CRM systems track a variety of activities that effect customer relationships either directly or indirectly. CRM systems often track direct interactions with customers (e.g., face to face meetings, phone calls, e-mail, etc.) or indirect interactions with customers (e.g., billing, planning, marketing, advertising, manufacturing, etc.). Information retrieved from CRM systems often is used to plan marketing campaigns, implement business strategies, and/or evaluate the success of CRM activities.
Individual customer representatives of an organization often interact with a variety of employees of their business partners in different roles. For example, a purchasing manager at a customer may interact with a sales representative of a supplier once per month on a face to face basis, but may interact with a customer service representative of the supplier via a telephone on a weekly or daily basis. This information can be tracked through the use of a CRM system.